We’ve been running the Enterprise Policy Management tools available from Codeplex for a few months now (Thanks to Buck Woody’s (blog | twitter) session at the PASS Summit). They’re honestly great. It’s a fantastic way to use Policy Based Management on 2000 and 2005 servers. We did hit some issues with timeouts and looking at the script, it made a call to invoke-sqlcmd, but didn’t pass the -querytimeout value. That means it default to 30 seconds and the import to database process was taking more than a minute for some of our queries. I did a little looking around and decided to just disable the timeout by passing a value of zero (0). But, I still got timeouts. Finally, after a bit of searching around, I found a closed (because it was posted in the wrong place) Connect item. It’s pretty simple to test. If you want to see a good run, do this:

You’ll get a timeout. I don’t know if this is a bug or by design, but it’s a bit of a pain that you can’t simply bypass the timeout. There is a max value (a huge max value) 65535, but what happens if I run a sql command that runs longer than that?. Please go and vote on the new Connect item.

If you’re involved with maintaining Microsoft Operations Manager, you probably have a few things you’d like to tell the developers, such as, couldn’t you get some sort of override manager/explorer built into the system? Well, they’ve built a new feedback mechanism through the updated Connect interface. Get on over there and make your voice heard.

Yeah, I wasn’t really tracking it either until I saw this post from the OM development team’s blog.

I’ve posted several times about how useful I find Microsoft Connect. I’ve seen issues introduced there get resolved through hot fixes and service packs. I sincerely believe it’s a very important tool in your arsenal to get the kind of service you need from Microsoft. Here’s a post on Connect that’s trying to make Connect itself easier to use. I’d strongly recommend you swing by and vote positively for this.

And for those who are unclear, click on the stars to submit your vote.

I have posted multiple times that I think Microsoft Connect is one of the best tools you can use to communicate with Microsoft. It works. Buck Woody is reinforcing my position from the Microsoft side of the fence.

Look, Microsoft is not a small nimble company like Red Gate. And again, unlike Red Gate, you might not find yourself in a conversation with the CEO of Microsoft on the floor of a conference like the PASS Summit. And short of going to PASS or TechEd to track down some of the developers and project managers (many of whom attend these conferences), you need to have a mechanism to communicate with the company. You can try standing on your front door step and screaming (trust me, the neighbors just call the police) or you can go to Connect.

Speaking of the PASS Summit, the Call for Speakers is open for a few more days. Please, don’t go over there and submit fantastic sessions that all of us will benefit from. Please, sit on your hands and ignore me. That way there’s less competition and I’ll get to present!

I’ve mentioned it before and I think it’s worth mentioning again, Microsoft Connect really works. I’ve seen bugs and enhancements listed there receive enough attention that they were in the next release or service pack of the product in question.

That brings me to DBPro. We use DBPro for all our database development. It’s a great tool. However, it’s still a bit to geared toward the individual user and not the team, despite it’s moniker (Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals). One thing that really does bother me is how it stores some settings, such as Target Connection in the .user file within a project. This means that each individual sets the connection for the project each time they check it out after another user has had it. Another option is to actually check in the .user file with the project, checking it out and overwriting your own .user file each time you need to work on the project. This apparently gives the MS guys fits, but it’s what we’re doing and it works. However, I’d like to see these project level settings be stored with the project. So I’ve put forward a Connect Enhancement Request. Here’s the link. Please, go and and vote for it, rate it high. The more votes we can get on this, the more likely it’ll be in the next SP or the next release. Thanks.

No, this isn’t an announcement. This is a request. Please follow this link and read Steve Jones’ argument in favor of getting an SP3. Please give it a high rating and a validation. Connect works. Microsoft does listen.